Do you also feel, every time you look at your advertising accounts, that bringing a genuinely buying customer to your e-shop gets more expensive month after month? And above all a new one? You are not alone. The golden era of cheap acquisition is gone for good, and Europe-wide pressure on margins is forcing e-shop owners to completely rethink their strategies. If you are asking how to stay profitable in this tough competitive battle, the answer is clear: in the coming months your main goal must be to increase average order value (AOV).
Imagine that for the same number of visitors you pay noticeably more this year than last year. Global data from the Skai platform shows an uncompromising reality: the average cost of a single click on a search ad has risen by up to 16% year on year. And an analysis by LocalIQ published on Search Engine Land speaks of a similar increase. So if a customer in your e-shop doesn’t buy more goods than before, your earnings will simply be eaten up by increasingly expensive advertising. With our clients we see the cost per click rise by 10 to 20% depending on the segment.
Summary for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Read the Whole Article
- Increasing average order value (AOV) is by far the fastest rescue for your profits, because it targets people who have already decided to buy from you.
- According to market data, advertising costs can grow by up to 16% a year, which, without bigger customer spending, means an enormous problem for your survival.
- It is not enough to blindly offer people any related goods; you need to measure exactly what customers click on and what they ultimately actually pay for.
- Offering well-thought-out product bundles or motivating with free shipping works wonderfully, and demonstrably gets customers to add another item to the purchase.
- To know what is really paying off for you, you need modern analytics that can show the advertising systems what your real net profit from a given purchase was.
Are you lost on how to set up measurement for your e-shop correctly, and don’t know where your money is leaking? Leave it to us. We help companies get accurate and reliable data they can rely on.
Why Is Increasing Average Order Value (AOV) Crucial for an E-shop’s Survival?
This special metric (known in English as Average Order Value) shows how much money one average customer spends with you in a single purchase. According to a large survey by the Heureka shopping adviser and the APEK association, average Czech spending last year was around CZK 1,900. Even though that may sound like a fairly decent number at first glance, with advertising getting constantly more expensive and heavy pressure on your selling prices, it simply stops being enough. You must find elegant ways to get the customer to add something else to the chosen goods.
From the point of view of company finances, increasing average order value (AOV) works as the surest emergency brake. It is always much easier and cheaper to persuade someone who already has something in their basket and trusts you to spend a little more than to pay for expensive advertising to bring in a completely new and uncertain visitor.
It is, however, extremely important to remember that a bigger purchase does not automatically mean greater wealth for your business. If you give people huge discounts or pay for ridiculously expensive shipping just so that they buy more items, it may in the end cost you much more money than you earn on the whole order.
In any case, we recommend watching whether your AOV grows at least with inflation. If not, it means that the consumer has fixed their average purchase with you at a certain amount and does not accept higher prices, but would rather drop some of the products they normally ordered. This can be problematic especially for segments offering more discretionary goods.
How to Get People to Buy More
There are several time-tested tricks for gently planting in customers’ minds the idea of a slightly bigger purchase. The most natural route is free shipping or the lure of a small gift. When the customer sees that they are literally a few crowns short of free postage, they very often prefer to add a small item to their purchase rather than hand their money over to the carrier. In this inconspicuous way the increase in average order value (AOV) happens almost immediately and both sides are satisfied.
The Magic of Bundles and Related Goods
Another extremely powerful weapon is so-called value bundles. A well-composed bundle (for example selling a mobile phone straight away with headphones and a durable case) can bring a noticeable increase in sales even for goods that otherwise do not sell very well.
When you add to this recommendations of further accessories tailored directly to the specific visitor, you have a huge advantage. Personalised recommendations can bring revenue growth of up to 15%. But everything must feel clean and simple. If you overcomplicate the very journey through the shopping basket to payment with dozens of pop-ups and confusing chaos, people will rather leave the website in disgust.
For personalised recommendations you can map out your own paths based on the behaviour patterns of your customers and so keep everything under control, or use one of the third parties to help you with this personalisation. It depends on whether you are looking for a route over which you will have control, or an easier implementation. A popular tool in this respect is Luigi’s Box, which we work with at clients, and even that is sensitive to well-measured data.
Without Accurate Data You Are Blind: How to Measure It All Correctly
Offering people accessories is one thing, but knowing whether it really helps is another. If you want the increase in average order value (AOV) to be lasting and to really earn you money, you must record absolutely every action in your measurement systems (such as the popular Google Analytics 4). Sometimes you may find that it is already too much data for Google Analytics and you need to write it directly into a data warehouse. In that case the help of a data analyst is essential. With clients we run into this need precisely when collecting impression data about products, verifying that filtering works, or with more complex personalisation in the basket.
The system must record not only the page view, but also which specially recommended goods the person saw and what they really clicked on. If you do not have this information technically connected correctly via the tracking codes of your online shop, you are only guessing from a crystal ball.
Ads Must See Deep into the Basket
The most advanced stage, which is being talked about this year, is sending precise information about the basket contents straight back to the Google Ads advertising system.
Google today offers a special feature thanks to which the system recognises exactly what a given person bought after clicking through from your ad. The advertising algorithm then no longer tries merely for any random sale, but smartly looks for exactly those people who make the most profitable purchases.
It is in these details that the real increase in average order value (AOV) is born, because your ads begin to think for you and to evaluate real profitability.
You might also be interested in: The importance of the data layer before launching campaigns for big events
What Shopping Basket Analysis Is and Why You Need It
You may now be racking your brains over how to find out which products you should show customers together. Shopping basket analysis serves this purpose. It sounds complicated, but it simply means that an analytics program goes through thousands of your past sales and looks for logical rules in them.
It finds out, for example, that people who buy a particular model of winter jacket from you will in most cases also buy insulated gloves with it.
An End to Shooting from the Hip
This precise analysis protects you from forcing complete nonsense on website visitors. The system can confirm mathematically that two given things are bought together for a clear reason, and not just by pure chance.
The decisive increase in average order value (AOV) lies precisely in this exact and confident recommending based on older data. You must always, however, pay close attention to the margin you have on these products. There is little point in persuading a customer to buy a heavy complementary product on which you make no profit, but for which you have to pay excessive shipping.
Google Ads has its own module for these needs, where, with basket contents sent correctly, it can evaluate which product brought the traffic and whether the user bought it or bought other products. Google Ads calls this analysis product-level sales data. For your own evaluation, shopping basket analysis of orders then comes into play, using the analysis of the same name.
Understanding the data and connecting sales with precise analytics requires technical knowledge. We will be glad to make sure your numbers finally make sense and you can grow without worry.
Conclusion
The times when online shops could grow simply by constantly bringing in new and cheap visitors are unfortunately gone for good. With constantly rising advertising costs, increasing average order value (AOV) is an absolute necessity, without which you will most likely not hold your own in 2026.
If you start offering shoppers the right complementary goods smartly and gently, and above all if you measure it all with absolute precision using modern tools, your profits will finally move upwards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do we suddenly need to worry so much about how much people spend on a single purchase?
Quite simply because bringing a new person to the website is getting ever more expensive. Various studies from practice show that click prices in ads have risen by roughly 16% over the past year. So for you to earn anything at all after paying for advertising, the same person on your website has to spend more money than in the past.
Does a customer spending more always automatically mean more money?
Unfortunately not always. If you try to get a customer to make a bigger purchase by giving them a huge discount, or by paying the postage on goods on which you make only a few crowns of profit, you can even end up in the red.
What is the point of sending detailed purchase data from the basket back to Google?
You ensure that Google’s advertising algorithm sees exactly which ads bring you the customers who make the biggest and most profitable purchases. The system learns from this and begins to show your ads to people who are very likely to also buy big.
How do I find out what goods I should actually offer people together in the e-shop?
This is what so-called shopping basket analysis is for. An analyst simply goes through the history of all your past orders and reliably shows you what customers most often add to the main goods. You will find out, for example, that with a particular printer the vast majority of people also take paper and replacement ink.
Is it enough to track only the average order value?
No. It is not enough for a deeper understanding, but it is a good starting point. AOV should grow at least with inflation and something on top. If that is not happening, it shows that customers change their buying behaviour as the prices of your products rise. Tracking what is in the baskets is thus another key indicator.
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